I'll Be
by Emily McDonald
Summary: Time had a way of changing even the best of things for the better. The question was, could she bring herself to even admit the possibility? Some things, she thought, might be too good to be true. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: **The world of _Bridge to Terabithia _is the property of Katherine Paterson.

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I'll Be

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By the time the red numbers of her alarm clock showed two AM, Leslie Burke was absolutely certain that she had lost her mind. And, she decided with conviction—as she tossed her quilt over the foot of the bed and rolled onto her side with an annoyed grunt—it was _his _entire fault.

A minute passed, then two, then three, as the young blonde girl—woman? No, she wasn't ready for that just yet—lay on her side in an agitated state. Fifteen seconds into her fourth minute of passionate stewing she gave up on counting, rolling over onto her back _again_ and sighing, this time with a more confused and exhausted air than one of hostility. It really wasn't his fault, not at all. She just wanted someone to blame who wasn't herself, and seeing as he was, indirectly, the cause of all of her frustration and confusion, he was a painfully obvious target. Using him—however quietly and unobvious, even to him—like this hurt her so much sometimes, especially on nights like tonight, after a day when he had been so much himself that it was almost alarming how easy it was for her to know what was going on inside of his head. He was easy to read, painfully so, once you knew where to look; his simplistic take on things was one aspect of his personality that she had noticed from the get-go, and she admired it as much now as she had before they had even become friends, back when he wouldn't so much as talk to her. Seven years later and he was still, in so many ways, that awkward boy she had strove to befriend back in grade school, the boy who had become her best friend in a matter of weeks, the person who she trusted with her life and who knew her better than anybody else. And yet he was so _different_, while completely remaining the same. The paradoxical state of the situation was positively maddening at times.

Leslie sat bolt upright in her bed with a huff, her shoulder length white blonde hair splaying out from her head in a frenzy of static. She rested her hands atop her knees for a moment before untangling her legs from the sheet and standing up, striding to her window. Her bedroom was pitch black, but the moon was full and bright in the Virginia sky, filling her boudoir with a silvery, ethereal glow that made her feel alive in a way nothing else really could. She pushed aside the gauzy white curtains and looked out across the dirt driveway that the Burkes' home shared with the Aarons'.

His window was dark. _As it should be_, she thought to herself. _This shouldn't be happening right now. I shouldn't be thinking about him like this._

She dropped the curtain into place again and returned to her bed, though she didn't lie down. She perched calmly on the edge of the mattress, shivering in spite of herself.

_When did I start thinking about him like this? _She found herself wondering. _What changed? Is it him? Me?_

A few more moments of quiet reflection found the decision that it was in fact a combination of both; her realizations of just how wonderful and rare a human being he really was exploded at about the time he did, both mentally and physically. Enough time of completely comfortable friendship had passed between the duo by the time they were ankle-deep in adolescence, Leslie herself had never once entertained the idea of being awkward around him when she was thirteen or fourteen years old.

It was around that time that her Grandma Sophia Burke began questioning her more deeply about her relationship with the brunette boy; Leslie's sharp mind immediately recognized the general sense of interrogation in her grandmother's tone, and she found herself deeply insulted.

There had been a time, a few years before, when Jess was all she could talk about, back when their friendship was new and she was still recovering from the shock of actually having a _best friend_. Her Sunday phone calls with Grandma Burke were always about him for around a year's time—after all, when she asked "How was your week, sweetheart?" and Leslie responded with a chipper "Great," or even "Wonderful!" that said grandmother hadn't heard from her granddaughter in years, she was bound to ask what had made it so utterly fantastic. Leslie's romps with Jess in the woods were always the cause of course, but even more so than the activities they did was their general sense of quiet togetherness, and the surprise that she always felt when she looked back on their afternoons and was filled with a pure joy that stemmed from something as simple as human companionship. The feeling was both delightful and foreign for her.

Since she felt a deep sense of loyalty to her friend and their promise to keep their 'kingdom' a secret, never once did she breathe a word to her Grandma about Terabithia itself, only that they enjoyed "running and hiking in the woods," and, when he came into the picture, the use of Prince Terrian as a "lookout". Her grandmother would then pepper her with questions about the boy's personality, what they talked about—naturally, as Terabithia was non-existent as far as her Grandma was concerned, she never mentioned their lengthy discourses on the finer points of a giant troll's psyche and physique—where he lived, and so on, and whenever they hung up Leslie could tell that her grandmother was genuinely happy that she had, at last, found a friend. But just as she sensed her Grandma Burke's joy for her in the early stages of her friendship with Jess, she also sensed the sudden change of mood regarding her dark-haired friend during a conversation in which she was animatedly describing the beautiful new box set of Narnia books that he had gotten her for her fourteenth birthday, and how she wished she had done something a bit nicer for him for _his _birthday, which was about five months before her own. As Christmas was only one month away at the time, Leslie had proceeded to ask her Grandma what _she_ thought he would like; after all, she had talked about him enough in the past for the older woman to have a very strong foundation of what the boy's interests were. Sophia's response surprised her granddaughter; her answer was dry, almost condescending.

"_You know him well enough, my dear,_" was what she had said. "_I'm sure he liked your gift just fine. Don't worry yourself so much over one person_."

Before Leslie even had time to fully reply, Sophia began speaking again, this time her tone was shocked as she voiced that she honestly couldn't believe that they had remained as close as they had for such a long time. Didn't she get _bored_, hanging out with the same boy all the time, especially when he didn't even share her same background or interest in literature? The comment had pushed Leslie over the edge; she went on a tirade, defending both Jess's intellect and his family.

"_I'll _never _be bored with him_," She had concluded hotly, "_because the landscape is always changing. Every time we go, something will have changed. There will always be something new to see or talk about_."

Her grandmother had gone silent for a moment, and for a moment she felt the stab of victory. Sophia's voice came over the line again, soft and gentle like it was supposed to be. Whispering with concern, she asked her if she and Jesse were, in fact, still hiking in the woods like they used to do when they were ten. _Alone_. When Leslie replied with a stunned: "_Yes, of course we are. It's what we _do, _Grandma_," the older woman had sighed and told her to please, be careful. Leslie had finished that conversation with an uncharacteristically heavy heart and her mind swirling with confusion, before picking the receiver back up one moment later and calling his house, something she almost never did. The sound of only his voice, not even accompanied by his usual soft half-smiles and warm amber tinted eyes, made everything feel alright again. The memory of it combined with the promise of hearing it again in a few minutes sustained her when she had relayed the events of the first conversation to her parents the following morning and tried, desperately, to make sense of the odd looks they gave her when she finished; a mixture of sympathy, mourning, happy laughter and the desperate frustration one feels when they want somebody to understand something that they're just not capable of comprehending yet.

* * *

Now, three years later, Leslie finally understood. She understood that Jess was not '_Just Jess_' to everyone; he was that only to her. To everybody else—her grandma, her parents, probably his mom and dad and older sisters, maybe the teachers at school—he was a _boy_, one whom was her age, who she was incredibly close to, who was so deeply seeded in her heart as a best friend and somebody who she trusted more than anyone that she had failed to see the quizzical looks others would give her when she so willingly offered up the fact that they spent nearly every afternoon together, far away from any kind of supervision. Her platonic love for him blinded her to the fact that as they aged, the idea that they could be friends and nothing more would become, in the minds of strangers and possibly even those who knew them, improbable, if not impossible. The comfort she used to get from touching him—slapping his shoulder in jest, taking his wrist to pull him towards something she wanted to show him, the occasional brief and awkward hug of gratitude, helping to ruffle his hair or straighten his church shirts, or even accepting his hand when she fell down—evaporated when she began her epiphany. Never once did she recoil from him in disgust, of course, or even anything close to it. As she had always been the one to initiate physical contact—something she thought to be hardwired into her feminine makeup, it was the only way she could think of to convey sympathy or comfort—she didn't have to worry about coming in close proximity to him often, but there were times when she couldn't avoid it without seeming outright rude or strange. A hand up into the pickup bed _was_ helpful in her cumbersome church dresses, but she couldn't help but feel as if the eyes of his entire family were on them, in addition to her own, even across the road. The heat of a blush would begin on her cheeks, and spread only to the place that he was in contact with.

She hadn't understood it then, and she didn't like to lie to herself by pretending that she even understood it now. She did know a few things for certain, however; while she had been wrestling with a myriad of conflicting emotions he remained constant, quicker to be quiet than to speak, but sometimes he would lapse into a hyper mood or behavior that was typical of males his age. The summer before ninth grade—fourteen had been a very complex year for their relationship, indeed—something minor about him did change, personality wise: he loved, more than ever, to make her laugh. While his standard half grins had always widened a little bit whenever she giggled, he had never acted in a way that seemed intentionally comedic, rarely did he do something purposeful to induce a reaction from her; in truth, she had always considered him a bit too serious for things like that. But she was wrong about him on that one count; a chuckle of any kind was like a drug for him, he would do, say or be anything that might cause her to indulge in mirth. It lightened her spirits considerably, too; not only was she was the one doing the laughing, but it warmed her heart to see that he could, from time to time, break away from being the somber and sometimes lonely person she had met in Mrs. Meyers' classroom, and it was even better when he would break down and laugh _with_ her. Best of all, though, was when she would still be giggling and he would stop, watching her with a light in his coppery brown eyes that she didn't recognize. A small smile would tug only one corner of his mouth all the way up, sometimes exposing the tops of his teeth. When he took the time to smile at her like that—it didn't occur often, it took a great deal of "detoxing" from his everyday family life to get him to fully drop his guard—she felt like the only person in the world who _really _mattered to him at that moment, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be, like he wouldn't change one thing about her even if he could.

When Jess would give her that crooked, joyful grin, Leslie Burke could only describe the way she felt in one word: _loved_.

* * *

While his periods of hyper and stereotypical behavior passed on in the fall when their freshman year began, something about him remained irrevocably changed. He appeared to be, at last, catching up with the changes she had begun to experience when she was twelve—they were on the same playing field mentally, and while she had grown a bit taller and slimmed down, going from merely athletic to athletic and _ladylike_, he took it to an entirely different level. He grew, too, but _a lot_. While still not overly tall by definition of his gender, he was taller than her by at least two heads, probably more. And while she remained lithe and petite; he stayed agile and somehow gained muscle mass over her too, until there was no doubt in her mind that he could pick her up with one arm and carry her easily, should he ever want to. But, of course, why would he want to?

While most people who knew him on the surface were surprised by his abrupt and complete physical change, it was those who knew him well—which was really just Leslie and May Belle—who were taken aback by his emotional transformation. His friend saw this the most; while still shy around strangers, he had taken the time to form his opinions on things and would speak of them openly and unwaveringly if he was asked about them. He seemed slightly more comfortable in his own skin, no longer intimidated by others but discriminatory in who he wished to spend his valuable time with, much to Leslie's relief he never seemed to be bored with her, though she had been waiting for the day just moments after celebrating his fifteenth birthday with his family. May Belle, who had been sensing a change in her brother's behavior towards their lively and lovable blonde neighbor, saw in clear light the depth of the feelings he had for Leslie, and her heart danced a jig that was similar to one that it had done five years before, when he had turned around on the bus to thank her for the first-ever birthday gift she presented to him. Since her mind, heart and understanding of human emotion had deepened in that time May Belle no longer felt the need to burst into childish playground songs to show her older brother that she knew what was going on with him, with the two of them. The siblings shared a moment of non-verbal communication at the dinner table during the family-plus-Leslie party, his eyes shining with a depth of honesty even _he_ wasn't aware of. May Belle looked to Leslie with a feeling of hope seeding in her breast, but was pulled back down to earth with a crushing _thud_. Leslie's normally decisive blue-green eyes were clouded with worry and thought; her brother's epiphany, she knew, would be brought to a screeching halt without Leslie's quiet guidance.

With the magical aura of Terabithian childhood morphing into a citadel of emotional equality and comfort that merely gave them a place to go that wasn't _home_, Leslie found herself being more and more burdened with the meanings behind her troubling phone conversation the previous year. Jesse's fifteenth birthday party was seen through a different eye than May Belle's, the younger girl's view still remained unaffected by the distorting mirror of adolescent self-consciousness; Leslie's, however minor the fogginess, was still altered. As she thought back on her grandmother's words and worries she was continually mortified; not only at the blatantly implied curiosity about her…_attraction_ to him, or him to her, but the idea that grew in her own head, the one that whispered, ever so softly, that loving Jess—merely _liking _him seemed to be too small and unnecessary a step to her—might not be so horrible after all. Natural enquiries to her mother about how healthy and normal male and female relationships worked, and what were good signs to find in a spouse were brought about after a particularly heart-wrenching conversation with Janice Avery, who had called Leslie crying after going with her mother to visit her father in prison on his birthday; the broken sobs of her frizzy haired friend had caused Leslie to storm down the stairs to the kitchen and demand that her mother tell her _why _Mrs. Avery would've married her husband in the first place and then continue to, as Janice had put it, "fall for his crap-filled lies again". Mrs. Burke had very complacently led her daughter into the den and talked to her in muted tones until she was calm once more, then readily answering the hundreds of questions that the ever-inquisitive Leslie peppered her with. Without even having to say it out loud or ask her mother for clarification on the subject, Leslie concluded that she had, unbeknownst to even herself, skipped the steps that '_liking_' somebody was supposed to guide you through. Judy had explained that some people grew desperate for any kind of love, and like Mrs. Avery, married those who were cruel because they bought the lies that were used to reel them in. But good relationships of any kind, she said, were based not on sexual attraction or even exact views, but friendship and mutual respect.

"_Loving someone romantically is different than anything you've experienced before, Les,_" Her mother had told her. _"There are so many varying kinds of affection and love that come out of relationships like that. For example, I love you, but I'm _in love_ with your father. Does that make sense?"_

And it had. She completely grasped the message; love, in the true and good form, started as friendship, a love for the person's mind and heart and how they made you feel, and because of that—combined, of course, with the fact that they were male and you were female—romantic feelings would almost always ensue. Even if their physical appearance had not immediately struck you as attractive, as time went on traits that had always been there would suddenly be viewed differently because the person _inside_ was so deeply treasured. Leslie had begun to tick things off in her head as they sat on the porch of the stronghold one August evening the summer before eleventh grade, a year and some months after the fifteenth birthday party, which also included a brief conversation between her and an unlikely member of the Aarons family as she was walked home, half asleep, but still coherent enough to be shaken so deeply by the words exchanged that she hadn't breathed a word of them to anyone, not even her mother or Janice. Telling May Belle or—God forbid!—Jess was completely out of the question; so much so that she had even convinced herself into believing that it had all been a delirious dream spun by sleep deprivation and chocolate frosting. The ghost of it still haunted her during the early twilight on that August eve, drawing different positive _physical_ traits of her brunette friend to the forefront of her mind. It was obvious that he was both taller and wider than her now; muscles in his back, shoulders and upper arms were becoming so prominent that it took all of her willpower not to vomit every day when she watched girls in their grade and below ogle at him in the cafeteria, ceasing only to shoot icy glowers of jealousy in her direction whenever the two of them were in close proximity. His dark hair had only gotten darker with age, but on nights like that one in particular, when the sun hit it full on, it glowed ever so slightly gold in the light. It was a bit longer now than it had been when they were younger—he wasn't religious about keeping it cropped over the ears and straight across his brow. While she wasn't _fond_ of it per say—she was the only other person besides his father who shared this opinion—she did like the way it waved when it was that length, meeting his eyelashes, which were enviously long and black.

As she was studying him he looked up from his sketchbook and raised an eyebrow curiously, the five words from the night after the birthday party that she tried so hard to repress whenever she was in his presence flashed in her mind and she flinched slightly, later blaming it on a mosquito or spider when he asked why she was so jumpy. The crooked smile and "that sucks," he gave her in return was proof enough that he had bought the lie—was it even a lie?—and he spent the rest of their time drawing while she read the same paragraph in _Sense and Sensibility _eight times because her mind was elsewhere; half of her brain convincing herself that the one off-tempo beat of her heart was a delayed reaction of embarrassment because she had been caught staring at him—her _best friend_, and nothing more—and was in no way related to that lopsided grin that made her feel like the center of his universe. The other half of her mind was wishing that she would be either hopelessly passionate like Marianne or gravely moral and dependable like Elinor when she decided that she was tired of being stuck in the middle of both personalities. Night fell and they crossed over on the rope to go home and she had neither peace of mind nor a sizable red welt on any patch of visible skin to back up the bug bite story, but like the good friend he was he never once called attention to the lack of blemish or the odd crease of her brow. Instead he just smiled at her like he always did when they went to their respective abodes, and she found that his quiet respect of her only made the peculiar feeling in her breast expand until it would not be ignored and, once she acknowledged the presence of the bizarre feeling, it repeated the words _you love him_ again and again in her head all night long.

She blinked and was back in the present again, two years down the line, sitting alone on the edge of her bed in the dark on a particularly warm March night, just four months after she turned seventeen and one month before he would turn eighteen; the ever-stressful fifteenth birthday party years behind them.

She should _not _be feeling like this. She didn't even have cause, just a memory that was so diluted by sleep that she had spent years convincing herself that it was a dream.

She rose from the edge of her bed with a sigh and collected the heap of blankets from the floor, dumping them in a pile on the mattress before lying down in the corner with her spine pressed flush again the wall, attempting to burrow under the mound of bedcovers without actually having to drape them over herself. Minutes of empty thoughts passed by and she began to feel drowsy at last, falling into the welcome arms of unconsciousness. Sleep greeted her with a memory she had tried to disguise as a dream; forever yanking away the protective shield of denial.

_

* * *

There was no moon out, only the stars, and the air held the promise of summer. Never before had the length of dirt driveway between her home and the Aarons' seemed so long—but her body, loaded with juice and chocolate cake and post-party excitement, combined with the fact that it was almost one in the morning, seemed to have forgotten how to function properly. Her sneakers dragged through the dust, her chin was almost touching her chest, blonde tresses dangling in her eyes. Her arms wrapped protectively around her ribs, fighting both a sudden chill and the desire to collapse on the ground and sleep in Jess's driveway until morning light came. She glanced behind her warily, and was crushed to see she had only moved about twenty feet. _

"_Leslie?" The voice, although gravelly, was not Jess's or her father's. She turned and watched with amazement as a slightly tipsy Jack Aarons walked towards her from the back porch of the little red house behind her, a lightweight blanket slung over his forearm. _

"_Leslie?" He said again. "You alright? Not gonna be sick on me, are ya?"_

"_No, sir," Her voice sounded weak and exhausted. "I'm fine."_

"_Humph." He caught up to her just in time, catching her elbow as the toe of her high top snagged a large chuck of gravel in her path. She staggered just the same, but knew that she would've fallen flat on her face without his assistance. "That sugar's poison to you kids. I told Mary, and you, Miss Leslie, are the evidence I need." He paused for a moment before venturing warily, "Are you __**sure **__you're not gonna puke on me?"_

"_I'm positive, Mr. Aarons. I'm fine. Really." The response earned her a scornful snort. _

"_You look like the living dead, Burke. Jess thought you were gonna keel over right in our driveway. Wouldn't move until I promised to see you to bed and give you this," Here he draped an old red blanket unceremoniously around her neck. "He would've done it himself, of course, but Mary wouldn't hear of it. He, of course, wouldn't hear of leaving you alone, and May and Joycie were even worse off than him, so here I am."_

_Despite the fact that her best friend's slightly drunk father was telling her that he was only helping her to calm his stubborn offspring's nerves and because his other children were being prohibited to do so by his wife, Leslie felt oddly touched and comforted—he was doing it only because Jess __**couldn't**__. She rubbed the edge of the worn blanket on her cheek and smiled into it. _

_The two walked in silence for a while, as was expected, Jack helping guide her feet around obstacles. What she did not expect, however, was for him to willingly speak again. _

"_You and Jess…" He began gruffly, clearing his throat and looking back towards his house almost guiltily. "You're really close, aren't you? You two…you have a lot of fun, right?"_

"_Oh, yes," Leslie's tired mind was quicker to validate their friendship than to question why Jack even felt he had to ask. "I love hanging out with Jess. And May Belle and Joyce too," She added quickly, out of loyalty to the younger girls. _

_Jack chuckled gutturally. "Well, that's nice to hear. He really enjoys you too. You're honest, he says, with who you are, and I know he likes that about you. He likes a lot about you."_

_Caught a bit off guard, she spoke slowly. "He's honest too. I appreciate it. There's no…"_

"_Drama?"_

"_Yeah." _

"_Mmhmm. He's talked about that, too."_

_For reasons unknown to her, Jack continued to chortle to himself the last few feet to her house, as if laughing at a deeply personal inside joke and he was trying to make her feel as though she was in the loop, even though she knew she wasn't. _

_He half-dragged her up the steps to her house, laughter softening but never fully ceasing. "You know something?" He asked her as they climbed the third and final stair._

"_What?" She said, and then wished she hadn't even asked._

_He unwound the red blanket from around her neck in one swift motion, much to her disappointment. She had been hoping to return it to Jess herself so that she would have a cleaner opening to thank him for his kindness._

"_I think he loves you. Really, I do." _

_Unaware of the odd look that had taken over her face; he slung the blanket over his arm again and turned to descend the steps. "Night, kid." He told her over his shoulder, having no clue that he was leaving her there, dumbfounded, staring out into the dark._

* * *

Her alarm woke her as her dream self lost sight of Jack Aarons' back, heart jumping in her chest. It was a memory. No dream could be that spot-on twice, and so many years apart. She lay under the mass of sheets and blankets, processing five words he had told her on her front porch, not even caring that he really thought it was true. The initial, half-believed thought was enough to unnerve her.

And yet…she wasn't unnerved, not really. The thought that he could actually love her, or had, made some small part of her heart sing.

_You love him. _The voice in her head said again.

_Yes, _She answered. _I do. _

The only thing left to do, she figured, was to see if he did, too. No need to prematurely rush something that already worked so well, of course. She would wait and see. But she was good at waiting. She would just wait and see what time did to the two of them, as it already had. Changes—good changes—would come when he was ready. When they both were ready. She closed her eyes and listened to the words she had spent so many years of her life trying to ignore.

_I think he loves you._

She prayed that it was true.

**

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Author's Notes: **If any of you feel that these emotions or conversations might not actually occur in real life, I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell you otherwise—save for some cannon connecting points and things that flush out the story for readability purposes, this story is drawn from real life, mostly those of others I know, but a few key events from my own too. I hope you enjoyed, and please review! :)


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